The 10 Best Stock Pickers You Read About On The Internet

There's always a ton of research from analysts that investors can sift through.

And in 2014, TipRanks kept track of who made the best calls. The service tracks the success of market analysts on Wall Street.

TipRanks measures analysts' "success rate" based on how their calls perform relative to the S&P 500 and the statistical difficulty of their calls.*

Here's what they found:

1. Jonathan Aschoff, Brean Capital

Industry: Healthcare

Success Rate: 71%

Average Return: +15.6%

Most successful recommendation: Tetraphase (+77%): "Tetraphase ended 3Q14 with $56 million in cash and equivalents, but added $81 million in net proceeds from a public offering of common shares in October 2014. Tetraphase's current cash on hand should be sufficient to support its operations, including pre-commercialization activities for eravacycline, through at least 3Q16."

2. Liana Moussatos, Wedbush

Industry: Healthcare

Success Rate: 63%

Average Return: +65.2%

Most successful recommendation: Intercept Pharma (+191.3%): "We recommend buying Intercept Pharmaceuticals on weakness due to their truly breakthrough new treatment and because we believe management are industry experts in this field and are also straight-shooters."

Most successful recommendation: Amkor (AMKR, +37.6%): "The company is indicating a ramping up of production of parts using 20-nanometer chip technology, which he thinks might be destined for Apple products."

5. Mike Burton, Brean Capital

Industry: Technology

Success Rate: 81%

Average Return: +23.6%

Most successful recommendation: Skyworks Solutions (SWKS, +50.7): "By the end of 2020, the total number of Internet of Things may reach ~75B, which provides huge opportunities ahead for Skyworks' connectivity and power management solutions."

Most successful recommendation: Skilled Healthcare Group (SKH, +43.2%): "These [Q3] results were very strong, but given the merger with the much-larger Genesis, SKH's results are no longer the only driver of the stock."

9. Eric Schmidt, Cowen & Co.

Industry: Healthcare

Success Rate: 72%

Average Return: 43.0%

Most successful recommendation: Isis Pharma (ISIS, +159%): "Isis Pharmaceuticals is engaged in antisense drug discovery and development, exploiting a novel drug discovery platform it created to generate a broad pipeline of first-in-class drugs."

10. Doug Freedman, RBC Capital

Industry: Technology

Success Rate: 73%

Average Return: +22.4%

Most successful recommendation: Peregrine Semiconductor (PSMI, +134.0%): ""Post earnings capitulation, risk/reward is attractive with downside risk protected by a deeply discounted valuation (<1.0x RBC '15E sales including cash) and valuable IP which could prove to be attractive in a consolidating wireless market." (Peregrine delisted in December.)

*Here's the methodology from TipRanks:

TipRanks looks at a variety of benchmarks, including the traditional % average over the S&P 500 and performance success rate. But, we go far beyond this information in our ranking over the analysts.

When it comes to evaluating adviser performance, we not only measure how much an analyst outperforms a specific benchmark, but also how consistent they are in doing so.

As such, TipRanks uses the statistical Z-test to determine the statistical viability / consistency of financial advisers stock recommendations against a benchmark.

Which adviser has a better success rate, one that gave 10 recommendations out of which 7 outperformed the benchmark (70%) or one that gave 100 recommendations out of which 68 outperformed the benchmark (68%)? While 70% is greater than 68%, achieving a 68% success rate over 100 recommendations is "statistically harder" than achieving 70% over 10.

Which adviser has a higher excess return over the benchmark, one that gave 10 recommendations and outperformed the benchmark by 3.2% or one that gave 100 recommendations and outperformed the benchmark by 'only' 3%?

To measure the adviser performance against the benchmark, TipRanks calculates the Z-score the recommendation set given by each adviser and can thus compare an adviser with 10 recommendations to an adviser that gave 100 recommendations.